One of the things I wanted in a vacation place was plenty of dark sky. Andy’s house on Moose Pond in Denmark was a little too much in the trees, without much sky. Our house in Casco has a good amount of sky, not a clear view horizon to horizon by any means, but a pretty good compromise if you want any woods around. It’s not nearly as dark as the sky we had at the bed and breakfast in Harrison when we were first looking at property in Maine, but dark enough to just barely see the Milky Way on a clear moonless night.

The perseid meteor shower is sometime in August. I was thinking more like the 16th or so, but when I looked on spaceweather on Friday the 11th I found that it was the next evening, but also worth looking right then. Some meteor showers only last for a few hours, but the perseids go on, at least a little, for a couple of days before and after the peak. I got everyone suitably psyched up and we all went outside to look. Soon after we started most of us saw a very bright meteor go rightwards through Cassiopea. After that the meteors were few and far between. It’s a very random thing, just one meteor every couple of minutes and if you’re not looking in the right direction you miss it while other people say, “There’s one!”. When the weather is comfortable and there aren’t mosquitos people tend to say, “Just one more and then I’m going in”, and then nothing happens for five minutes. Everyone, including Emma, saw at least a couple. Shooting stars! Enough reason for a kid to be enthusiastic about the trip.

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